Artwork Search

Arts in Southeast Asia Database

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Tower with Faces: Prasat Bayon

Keywords : Angkor Wat, Yasovarman, Jayavarman VII, Prasat Bayon, Angkor Thom

Site common namePrasat Bayon
Type of artworkArchitecture
Village-
Province/CityAngkor
StateSiem Reap
CountryCambodia
Geographic Coordinates
Decimal degree		Lat : 13.441111
Long : 103.858611

History of productionJayavarman VII established the city of Angkor Thom as the new capital overlapping the previous capital of Angkor which had been establish before by Yaśovarman I. In the center of the new city, The temple of Bayon is conceived as the abode of Buddha. The temple-city is enclosed by the city wall of 3 kilometers long. At the cardinal directions of the city wall, there are the gateways. Possibly, this new city is considered to be auspicious for the dwellers while the previous became inauspicious as it had been attacked by the Chams before Jayavarman VII’s reign.
ArtBayon, the temple constructed by Jayavarman VII, is the last stepped-pyramid temple in Angkorian tradition. This temple was dedicated to the supreme Buddha in Mahayana Buddhism. The human faces decorating the towers in every direction are iconograplically interesting. Some scholars presume that the face is identifiable as the face of the king himself, while other assumptions connect the faces with either Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara or Brahma Sanatkumar. The face is characterized by the typical smiling called “Bayon smile”.
PeriodHistorical Period
Art periodBayon
Age13th Century A.D.
ReligionBuddhism
SectMahayana

Type of LicenseAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)
RightsPrincess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre
Date of record creation2015-02-00
Record creatorChedha Tingsanchali